Rach_25

Currently I hold these qualifications in Business Administration & Info Tech:

National Qualification
Higher National Qualification
Higher National Diploma

Does anyone know what this equates to in the United States - If anything at all. I have tried contacting several university's/college with no hope whatsoever.

Any help would be much appreciated

Rach x

hobbes79

I would say an Associates Degree, but that's not based on anything formal.

Rach_25

I went into third year of a degree at university but unfortunately had to pull out, so basically I was told that I have the equivalent to 2 years university but don't know if that's quite right.

rpjs

I think an Associate's degree here is a two-year degree, but a Bachelor's here is always at least four-year, whereas in England and Wales it's usually three-year. Unless I am very much mistaken, both a UK HND and a US Associate's are the highest qualification you can get in their respective countries short of a Bachelor's degree, so are broadly equivalent in that respect at least.

It's documenting the correct equivalence that will be the problem for you. I think others have mentioned that there are services in the US that will assess your UK qualifications and sort-of-formally define what that equates to in US terms but you'll have to pay for that sort of thing and I've no idea how widely accepted such things are.

N1cky

I'd say not, I'm just going through having my qualifications translated. I'm qualified AAT, and Management level CIMA having studied the final year but moving to the US before completing the course, I also have a NVQ in Bus Admin. I have 120 US unit credits and a standard bachelors degree requires 120 US unit credits. However, I'm now trying to negotiate down the 48 units the uni are saying I still need to complete to get my Bachelors to the 30 they say is the minimum you must do with them to study. I had to search long and hard to get a Uni who allow credit transfers for an online course, I believe it is easier for FT course.

Bob

What do you want to do with them?

If getting into college, probably get them converted using some random service like WES.

If it's for a job, wait and see what service they ask you to use, but count on the qualifications meaning an absolute bugger all, unfortunately.

Edit - to add, meaning unless it's a bachelors, it won't have any meaning, so you couldn't tick that box on a job application, which is the biggest hurdle.

Ray

http://www.wes.org/

Bushers

I found that it depends on the college youre thinking of attending, some colleges in the US barely recognise each others credits so for us expats its even worse!

I recently looked into what my credit for an HNC would equate to completing my Bachelors and it wasnt alot, in the range of 14 credit hours which isnt much in comparison to the full Bachelors requirement. Oddly enough it seems you can barter a little and in some areas of the curriculum you can sit the exam to avoid taking the class, but you have to pay - around $195 per test.

dunroving

Bear in mind that even if your qualifications are officially translated into, say, an associates degree this doesn't guarantee it will be useful for whatever purpose you intend.

As just stated, US universities don't have standardized rules (the 120 CR for a US degree isn't even standard across, or within universities - the course I was degree director for had a 126 CR minimum, with something like 96 CR in the major).

So if you end up with a piece of paper saying you have the equivalent of a US 2-year associates in accounting (for example), doesn't mean University X will give you 2 years credit towards a 4-year bachelors in accounting. Believe it or not, you might even be required to take general education classes (science, humanities, English, algebra).

S Folinsky

"Credit units" can vary. University of California uses the "Quarter" system so its units are roughly 45 per year while the standard "semester unit" is roughly 30 per year. Inasmuch as US Selective Service required "normal progress" to maintain the "2-S" student deferment, many students made sure that they had those 30 per year only to discover that the school required 124 for graduation! I had 124.5 -- on top of that, the breadth requirement included 2 units on one particular subject, and I had 1.5. However, the 1.5 from the first school was equivalent to 3.0 from my second school so they gave me a waiver.